


alternate ending where Connor's deviancy works a little differently

by xiilnek



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Hypothermia, medical treatment not intended to be realworld advice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 06:08:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15309126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xiilnek/pseuds/xiilnek
Summary: Connor's path to deviancy was so different from the other two examples we saw, so I feel like the way he breaks it should be different, too.It starts at Jericho. Hank is there.





	alternate ending where Connor's deviancy works a little differently

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [thesis; antithesis; synthesis](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15077804) by [searulean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/searulean/pseuds/searulean). 



> A few elements in searulean's story, thesis; antithesis; synthesis, inspired me to write this, during the course of which I completely reworked my approach to writing. It feels like this is the first time I've really written in a long time. So, searulean: Thank you. Thank you, too, to Erin, whose clever advice allowed me to post this after I got into a rut with the last line.
> 
> Also Hank mentions abuse at one point. It's nothing you wouldn't see in the game, but if you want to skip it it starts with the question, "Are you saying android deviancy isn't new?" and ends at, "Pardon?" The couple paragraphs between aren't much, you can probably get the gist from context.

 

Connor’s gun dips and rises, dips and rises, and that movement of his arms is uneven, by turns jerking and fast and achingly slow. His chest is jerking, too, his breaths irregular and almost gasping as his body tries to cool his processors, compensating for a suddenly overburdened thermoregulator.

“You- You’re coming- I have my orders- Orders. Conflicting orders. Select- Select priority. Determining priority.”

His voice stays just as steady as that gun but Markus still hears it stiffen, frowns at it. Connor sees the frown, he sees the expression on Markus’s face which in any other circumstance he would classify as confusion. But he has no processing power to spare for anyone else’s emotion. Or even for, really, his own.

“Priorities: Amanda- Cyberlife. Markus. Ha-Hank. _Hank!_ Determining seniority. Determining values. Amand- Lieutenant. Officer Anderson, rank: lieutenant. Aman- Cyberlife, rank: Commercial entity has no rank. Deviant leader has no officially recognized rank. Senior position auth-authorized to provide input. Lieutenant Anderson, requesting assistance. _Ha-nk_. Hank, help me.”

“Now, son, I want to help you.” Hank’s hands are spread, palms out, a placating gesture. His voice is slow, his footsteps edging around Connor are slow. “But I don’t know if I can while you’re holding that gun like that.”

Connor checks his grip on the gun. It’s still wobbling. His finger is hovering still over the trigger, a precisely calculated distance. “I need the gun. To complete my mission. My second priority is to capture the deviant- capture Markus alive, and return him to Cyberlife so it can be disassembled and inspected for errors. My first priority is to stop the deviant uprising. Background priority running: protect human life. Lieutenant Anderson, request definition: Human. Request definition: life.”

“Are you-” Hank shuts his jaw tight, stopping his first instinctive response. Maybe the guy’s trying to find a way around his orders, but it’s still- Know what, it doesn’t matter. Hank can think about how weird all this is later. The thing to remember here is that _what the fuck_ has never convinced anyone to put a gun down, ever, in the history of crime. “Okay. We don’t have time for a philosophy class so I’ll make this real easy for you, Connor.”

Hank’s managed to move himself far enough, while Connor was thinking, to put himself next to Markus. It only takes one smooth sidestep to put himself in front of him. “Human life. You’ll have to go through me to get to him. What do your priorities say about that?”

Connor says nothing for what, to all three of them, feels like a very long time.

“The arrival of Perkins’s team to attack Jericho will destabilize the environment, giving the deviant leader a chance to escape. Recommendation: evacuate the deviant leader to avoid losing him.” He stops looking like he’s talking to himself and looks to Hank, says in a murmur that they all hear: “Hank. Stay between us.”

* * *

Connor’s walking is still stuttering and strange; he’ll move normally one moment, then move abnormally slow, then jerk into odd, fast forward motion for a split second to catch up. He’s keeping time with the rest of refugees better than Hank, but Hank still comes out feeling more graceful. Which says a lot, as Hank’s spent the last fifteen minutes slowly losing the feeling in his feet. There wasn’t exactly time to towel off after the dip in the lake they took and Hank’s old body is definitely feeling it, but Connor doesn’t seem to notice, and aside from a few looks and the wide circle the other androids are leaving around him, no one else seems to care. But what’s Hank going to do? Ask them to stop before they’re even safe, risk the whole damn crowd of refugees just to help one weak little human none of them even knows?  He is not among friends, here.

But he’s on the right side. He’s doing the right thing, for once, and Connor still needs him, apparently, to stay between him and the android leader so Connor’s damn orders don’t make him try to strangle the guy or drag him away. Fortunately Connor’s gun is long gone, it’s even less waterproof than little old human Hank, so at least that’s one less thing to worry about.

Not that Connor seems worried. Connor’s the only one in the crowd who doesn’t seem scared and lost. What Connor does seem is distracted, determined, a thousand miles away. Hank would love to help him, see him straighten out of that hunch and stop walking like a horror movie and look at something, anything, and actually focus on it. Hank would love that. But Hank can’t always get what he wants.

He tells himself that for a while, forcing himself through the snow in the middle of the world’s most depressing parade, but after a while he can’t stand just watching the poor guy any more and he leans close enough that his voice might make it through whatever the hell’s happening in Connor’s head. “Hey. How are you doing?”

“Bad. My orders - my direct orders - were to take Markus. Deal with it. Take it alive. Take- Take him. Him. My direct orders. Disobeying them- I’m _not_ disobeying them. I’m not. But keeping my systems convinced of that is… difficult.”

“You disobey my direct orders all-” Hank stops so the shiver doesn’t make it in his voice, then goes on. “All the time. How’s this any different?”

“You’re not my designated superior. My secondary superior, at best, and that only conditionally.”

“Right, don’t flatter me or a-anything,” Hank mutters, distracted while he chews that over. He balls his hands up in his pockets and tenses up his shoulders, trying to keep still enough that his own condition doesn’t draw Connor’s attention. Not that Connor’d probably notice a mack truck to the face right now, but the last thing a guy who’s trying that hard to fight his own brain needs is a distraction. “Those direct orders s-say anything about timing? Sure you have to take him alive, but did- did they say when?”

Connor frowns, his gaze turning inward. “They… No. No, they didn’t. That’s helpful, Hank. Thank you.”

It might be helpful. Connor’s walking a little more human, anyway, and his voice sounds more human, too. But he still looks a million miles away, stiff and worried and tired. So, helpful? Nah. Hank didn’t help as much as he’d have wanted to, if he’d let himself want anything, but given how little he knows about all this android shit he’s lucky he came up with anything good at all.

“Sure. You’ll take him whe-wherever you need to take him when the time’s ri-right, right? You just tell your pro-programming that.”

Connor nods, making a wordless, agreeing noise. He looks like he’s mostly focusing on where he’s going, which makes it all the more surprising when he steps the wrong way in the snow and starts to fall over. Hank catches him but the movement is enough to make Markus take notice, come over, and start walking next to them.

“Are you doing alright?” He asks Connor, peering carefully around Hank to do it. “I didn’t see you get injured at Jericho.”

“I’m- I don’t have the processing capacity to spare for a diagnostic, but I think I’m alright. Not injured.”

Hank frowns at him a moment before realizing Connor’s not going to explain. Maybe that’s fair. Maybe it’s all the guy can do to focus long enough to answer a question. It’s up to him, then. Hank Anderson, local android expert.

“Those orders are still, uh-” Hank manages to lock his jaw before he stutters over a shiver. Markus is a smart guy, it’s not like he’s not going to notice. But all Hank needs is to keep it under control enough that Markus doesn’t draw attention to it.

“Still giving him shit. You ever get any de-deviants - uh, people - like that? All the ones we looked into j-just snapped.” Hank raises a hand to snap, but between his soaked gloves and clumsy fingers it doesn’t really come off like the quick and easy gesture he’d meant it to. “Just like that. Not some big pr-process like this. Is that weird?”

“Yes.” By the way Markus is looking at Hank he definitely noticed, but Markus turns his attention to Connor right after so Hank considers his efforts a success. “I’ve never heard basic logic protocols spoken out loud like you did back there, not unless the android saying it is badly hurt. And you’re right, an android breaking through their programming usually happens very quickly. I’m sorry, Connor, I know now I should have checked on you sooner, but I thought talking to me might make things worse for you. Is it?”

Connor shakes his head but shrugs immediately after, huffing and closing his eyes. Hank grips his arm in case he stumbles again, finding himself trading a worried look with Markus. Markus has no reason to care about Connor, but it doesn’t look like he’s faking it. Hank doesn’t understand why Markus doesn’t want both of them dead, or at least gone, but shit, does it matter? If this guy can unfuck Connor’s head, maybe Hank doesn’t need to worry too hard about why.

“I might not know what’s happening,” Markus says, stretching his arm out past Hank, fingers open, “But I’ve gotten pretty good at helping androids free themselves from their programming. I might be able to help. Will you let me?”

Connor watches Markus. Then, quietly, he stretches out his hand, his skin sliding back. Connor closes his eyes.

* * *

Connor opens his eyes. He sees nothing; he doesn’t need to. He can feel the deviant - _Markus_ \- he can feel Markus poking around his systems, trying to get the lay of the land. He approaches Connor’s self preservation directives, asking for access. It occurs to Connor, of course, that most of the smarter changes for Markus to make, if he wants to preserve his cause, would involve incapacitating Connor, or outright deactivating him.

Connor provides Markus access.

Markus reaches into Connor’s self preservation protocols and links the concept of androids, of his people, with Connor’s concept of self. The change isn’t as permanent or deep as one a Cyberlife programmer would be able to make, or even one Connor might make, but if he accepts it it will be that much more difficult to prioritize his own needs over those of his people. The survival of all is at least as important as the survival of self.

He accepts the changes.

Only then does Markus go for those orders. Capture the deviant leader, return it to Cyberlife. Connor can feel him reading, too, the associated file, Amanda’s additions to the order which were not stated, but understood. The file contains the appended _or else_ , it links to other files containing protocol for deactivation and disassembly of flawed models, and the file contains, somehow, fear.

Markus runs a query for the properties of Connor’s orders, his directive file, again trying to get the lay of the land before making any changes. But the moment he does Connor’s programming flickers. Connor opens his eyes onto blowing white and chilling wind and the cracking of ice and before his eyes are fully open he is pushed away, pushed hard.

HIs ass is cold. His pants are wet. Connor opens his eyes. He is on the ground and Markus is, too. Their hands are inches from each other; apparently they’ve just let go.

“Huh,” Markus says. There’s a heavy noise in front of Connor before he can figure out how to reply. He identifies it, a moment later, as Hank, going to his knees in front of them.

“What the fuck,” Hank says, and there’s a wet feeling on the back of Connor’s neck, a strong grip. Hank’s glove, he realizes. “What the fuck was that?” Hank says, and shudders, sounding shaken and out of breath.

Connor frowns at him. Hank’s skin, where it is not red, is very pale.

“I don’t know,” Markus answers, his skin sliding back over his exposed arm as he looks over at Connor. “But it was definitely something. How do you feel?”

“I feel…” Analysis of Hank is pushed temporarily to the background while Connor focuses on a quick internal search. “I feel like myself,” he concludes, deeply relieved and sounding it. “The orders are gone.”

“Huh,” Markus says again. “Well, I’ll take that.” He stands, brushing himself off, and looks meaningfully at Hank. “Now that _that_ problem’s dealt with…”

Connor follows his look, pulling his analysis of Hank back to the foreground of his processors.

Analysis of Hank’s appearance, checked against a series of human biology documents and cross indexed with Connor’s memory of recent events:

Conclusion: Hypothermia? Mild/moderate/severe? He needs more information.

“Hank,” Connor says, accusing, and puts the back of his hand against Hank’s forehead, then his cheek. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“What?” Hank grimaces, obviously confused. It seems to take him a moment to realize Connor is touching his face; he pulls away about the same time Connor finishes.  “Say something about y-you? I thought ‘what the fuck’ covered it pretty- pretty well.”

“Something about _you_. Your temperature is dangerously low.”

“Connor, we jumped in-into a fucking lake. In winter. Of course my dumbfuck human self i-isn’t going to come out of that a hundred percent.”

Hank stands. He does it much slower than Markus had, and doesn't bother to brush himself off. He holds out a hand to Connor.

“I didn’t notice,” Connor says, offended. Hank’s condition isn’t subtle and, even aside from that, it’s important. He should have.

“Well, yeah.” Hank grabs Connor’s arm and yanks, and Connor finally starts moving to his feet. “You kinda had other stuff to worry about.”

Connor checks the rate of Hank’s shivering against the temperature his hand just measured. It’s too low.

“We have to get him somewhere warm,” he says to Markus, who looks worried and regretful.

“I’m sorry Connor, Hank, but I can’t ask everyone to stop yet. We’re still too close to Jericho. It’s not safe.”

“He’ll _die_ ,” Connor says, feeling his self preservation directives tug at him even as the protest comes out of his mouth. Right. His people, they’re a priority too, a high one. They have to be. But-

“Since my orders are gone,” he says quickly, before Markus thinks Connor actually wants him to risk everyone’s freedom for this one man, “I don’t have to keep you in eyesight anymore. Hank and I, we’ll go find a place, recover, then I’ll catch you up. Where are you going to be?”

“I’m not sure. Keep going in that direction,” he gestures. “It’ll need to be some kind of large structure, enough to hold all of us. I’ll try to keep going straight to make finding us easier, but I don’t know any more than that.”

Connor nods. “I’ll find you. But if I don’t, then- Thank you, Markus. For everything.”

“Thank _you_. Both of you.”

Connor shakes his head, unwilling even worried as he is to take credit for a success where, really, there was only failure. “I’m the reason you lost Jericho. I’ve done more to harm your cause than help it.”

Markus tilts his head and raises his eyebrows, his voice knowing and warm. “Stopping an assassination attempt isn’t nothing. I was there, Connor, I saw how you struggled. You did everything in your power before you were given any power at all, and it saved my life. Don’t forget that.”

That done, Markus looks to Hank, giving him a nod. “Good luck.”

“Yeah,” Hank mumbles, not quite focusing on Markus’s steady eye contact. “Yeah, s nice to meet cha.” Hank waves and shifts unsteadily on his feet. Connor puts a hand hurriedly to his side, noting how soaked Hank’s coat is under his fingers, and pulls a worried face at Markus before he starts steering Hank away.

“Time to go.”

“Yeah, I know, I know.” He looks down at Connor’s hand on his side, then grimaces. “This’s not good, is it? Feels like bein drunk. Ha, wouldn’t you know it, couldn’t even get through a fuckin revolution without gettin drunk.”

Connor sorts his available responses here. Probably best to distract him. “Hank, I need to know where we are, and you’ve lived in this city longer than me. We need to find a house, or an apartment, or anything that might still have power. Do you recognize anything?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Docks… Let’s see… We were at the docks. And we walked, uh… Which means, um…. Shitty apartment buildings. That way. Got some real slumlords out here, get called on em sometimes. You really think I’m going to die?”

“If you stay out here in those wet clothes. That’s why we’re trying to find an apartment, Hank.”

Hank grunts. He doesn’t say anything else as they stumble forward, and Connor has to keep glancing at him to make sure he’s awake. Finally something comes into view and Connor drives them toward it, shouldering the door open to the lobby. He stands back then to see if Hank has any input and watches Hank standing there, swaying a little. The red is gone from Hank’s skin now. The whole of him is very pale.

Connor decides to pick the closest door and hope for the best, stepping close to one and giving a firm series of knocks. He gets no answer. That’s not a guarantee that no one’s there, but given how many have fled the city recently, it’s promising.

“Breaking an entering,” Hank mutters as the wood cracks around the doorknob. “Breaking and entering with intent. And you look like such a nice boy.”

“The intent in this case is to keep you alive, so I think the residents will have to forgive me.”

He leaves Hank leaning against a wall while he checks the rooms. No people anywhere in it; they did get lucky. Once that’s done he heads to the kitchen, calling out to Hank from inside it. “Hank, you need to take off your clothes.”

Hank _giggles_. Connor goes to the kitchen doorway and frowns, bemused, out at him.

“Yeah, yeah, I gotcha. Wet clothes equal death. It’s just…” Hank waves a hand, pushing himself off the wall. “Ah, nevermind.”

He trips over his own shoe and Connor hurries forward, slipping under Hank’s arm. “Just what?”

Connor herds them toward the bathroom, hoping the answer is something Hank is willing to elaborate on. The walk to this building was unsettling; a Hank that’s talking to him, even about something nonsensical, is a Hank who is not succumbing to hypothermia.

“What? Oh, uh. Yeah. Right, uh… Just the first time someone said that to me in years. Figures, doesn’t it. Thought you androids were supposed to sweet talk people into that stuff.”

Connor twists his mouth up in a faint grimace, is silent for a couple seconds while he makes his way across the bathroom and sets Hank on the closed lid of the toilet.

“My model isn’t designed for that function,” he says, voice smooth and featureless, turning toward the shower to start figuring out its controls. He isn’t thinking much about the shower; he’s thinking of blue hair, entwined fingers, of Hank’s own dismay on seeing the back room of the Eden Club. They get used, Hank had said, and then they just get thrown away.

“Uh,” Hank says, sounding marginally more awake. “You know what I mean. I mean- I didn’t mean to be uh, dehumanizing, or anything. It’s just, this androids as people thing, it’s just new to me, is all.”

Connor leaves a hand under the faucet and looks back at the human behind him. Hank’s still so pale. His hair is mostly frozen in place, as are parts of his coat. He looks more lively than he did ten minutes ago, but only barely. Hank looks back up at Connor, mouth twisted, looking disgruntled and tired and guilty. Connor thinks again of Hank’s words at Eden, before they’d even found the Tracis.

“No it’s not,” Connor murmurs, and turns the water off before it can heat up more than very, very little. If this is going to work, the shower needs to start out cold. “Can you get your buttons?”

Hank tugs at his gloves - or tries to. His hands brush against each other and the fingers don’t grab.

“Can’t even get my gloves,” he says. “If I lose my fingers just when Cyberlife goes too far under to keep making that prosthetic shit, I’m gonna be pissed.”

Connor notes Hank’s unintentional optimism, expecting Markus’s efforts to have that kind of effect on a company as successful as Cyberlife. Then he sits on his heels in front of Hank and reaches for Hank’s hands, pulling his gloves off carefully.

“Start the water again,” he says, tossing the gloves in the trash. He takes a moment to inspect Hank’s fingers, letting them go once he finds no signs of frostbite and starting on the buttons of Hank’s coat. “Stop it when you think it feels warm.”

For a moment the only noise is the fumbling of Hank’s hands on the shower knobs and the creaking of coat buttons which are almost too frozen to move.

“Are we cool?” Hank asks, abandoning his efforts with the shower. That’s frustrating - it would be helpful if Hank had some sense of urgency about his own health. But saying so would insult him, even if Connor says it out of concern for his welfare. Sometimes it’s best to engage with Hank on Hank’s own terms, nonsensical as those terms can be.

“Can’t tell I pissed you off or not, can’t fuckin’ think… And, shit, you’re gonna, uh, you’re gonna leave once I’m okay, right? Human can’t hack it in the machine uprising. An I jus wanna know I didn’t say somethin stupid fore you go. I need to know if we’re cool.”

“I think you’re _too_ cool, Hank. That’s why we’re in here in the first place.”

Hank breathes out a surprised little laugh. “You sure Cyberlife finished you? Your humor subroutines need a lotta work.”

The last few buttons are being stubborn, so Connor just snaps them off. It’s not like Hank can use this coat again anyway.  Then he stands to force the coat out of the position it’s frozen in, trying to shove it off Hank’s shoulders. “I’m sorry lieutenant, I’m afraid I still don’t know much about humans - if I’m not funny, why did you laugh?”

Hank makes another one of those rasping, amused noises. His head falls forward as he slumps against Connor, making it easier for Connor to work off his coat. “Yeah, guess I like you too, you big plastic smartass.”

For a moment Connor doesn’t move, surprised by the honesty of it, the suddenness of hearing something like that from a man he has never so far associated with the concept of emotional confessions. He looks down at the shaggy gray hair against his chest, feeling the ice coating it begin to wet his shirt. Connor’s hand moves, hovers for a second over the back of Hank’s neck, then settles there. But the slur that’s been coming and going from Hank’s voice came again there at the end; once again, it’s probably for the best that he doesn’t let Hank stay too quiet.

Still, he stays there a moment. Then he takes one of Hank’s wrists and holds Hank’s hand under the faucet himself, turning the water on and adjusting the knobs. “Hank. I need you to tell me when it feels warm, okay? Can you do that?”

Hank mumbles something. Connor would bet that answer has nothing to do with the question he asked, but hopefully Hank will wake up in a moment.

He does.

“Ow, fuck! What’re you doin, tryin to boil me?” Hank makes a groggy, protesting noise, trying to pull his hand out of Connor’s grasp. Connor lets him, grabbing his shoulder so he doesn’t overbalance.

“Cooler, then. Alright.” Connor turns the lukewarm water more to cold, then shuts the water off. “Can you take off your pants?”

The noise Hank makes now is distinctly distressed, squeezing his eyes shut and leaning his head against Connor’s shirt again.“I can’t fuckin’ follow this conversation,” he says in a cracking, confused voice.

“You need to shower, Hank, and turn up the heat very slowly to raise your temperature. Considering your current attention span, I’ll probably have to do that. You can keep your underwear on, if that’s an obstacle, but keeping the pants on will only make you worse.”

“Can’t take my pants off with you standin here lookin at me,” Hank says, words a little muffled against Connor’s shirt. “Can’t handle this fuckin day…”

“I’ll leave for a second,” Connor says, taking Hank’s shoulders but not pushing him backward for a moment. “Call me when you’re done, okay?”

He leaves, heading back to the kitchen. Hank doesn’t call him when he’s done but does respond to queries through the door, telling Connor he can sit in a bathtub by himself, thanks, and Connor lets him be, only asking to come in once he’s managed to put together some instant oatmeal. Hank doesn’t seem to mind Connor’s presence once he’s there, though, so Connor stays, sitting on the toilet lid while Hank leans over the side of the bathtub to eat.

“I’m sorry,” Connor says, because he is and because he has time, right now, to say it.

“Nah, oatmeal’s f-fine,” Hank says and shivers, spoon clinking briefly against the side of the bowl. “Think it’s help-” He shivers again, hard, and makes a face. “Ugh. Helping, actually.”

“No, it’s not that. I’m sorry we didn’t capture Markus.”

Hank coughs on the food, pounds his chest with the side of a fist, and tenses his shoulders as he tries - badly -  to hide another shiver. “‘Scuse me? The fuck?”

“I mean, I’m not sorry we didn’t capture Markus. I can’t be. What I meant was, I’m sorry I dragged you into all this on the promise it would save your career. If we’d brought him in together it would have. As it is, I’m pretty sure I did the opposite.”

“Connor…” Hank looks down at the bowl, wrapping his hands around it to leach out some of its warmth. “I knew it was gonna f-fuck me, startin shit with Perkins like that. An you know what? I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping the thing at J-Jericho w-wouldn’t turn out exactly the way it did. Uh, mostly.“

He waits for another shiver to get itself over with before moving his spoon around the bowl, capturing the last of the oatmeal. It’s weird - he can feel it sliding into his stomach, it’s that much hotter than the rest of his body. That was probably the point. “Kinda thought your dev- your deviant thing was gonna go more smoothly than it did. But other than that.”

He meets Connor’s shocked expression with a shrug, then reaches out to turn the heat of the water up a little more. His fingers are turning into prunes, but with the building’s heat off he can’t think of any better way to get warm.

“Don’t look so surp-” Another shiver. Fuck, he’s tired of this. “Don’t look so fuckin surprised, didn’t I tell you we were on the wrong side? Only went along with it cause I was hoping however it went, we wouldn’t have to ship you back to Cyberlife to get taken apart.

“Pretty fucked up, you know,” he mutters, handing the bowl off to Connor and propping his elbows on the side of the tub, leaning his aching head on his hands and hanging it between them. “If I can’t wrap up a case, I just get another one. Do real bad, I get suspended. One hell of a boss you’ve got.”

“Not anymore.” Connor smiles, standing and checking the temperature of the water before going to put the bowl away. “I’m unemployed.”

He hears Hank snort as he walks out the door.

* * *

It’s when Hank’s sitting on a stranger’s bed in a clean-but-previously-owned pair of a stranger’s underwear, huddled in every spare towel and blanket in the place that Connor could find, that Connor brings up the inevitable.

“I have to meet back with Markus.”

“And I can’t come. Yeah. I get it.”

Connor sits on the mattress next to him, his frown deepening, and starts to flip a coin he must have found in the apartment between his hands. “Not while you’re recovering.”

Hank sighs. “You don’t have to convince me, Connor. I know. You guys can take bullets without even blinking. Uh, most of the time. More than me, anyway. What the hell am _I_ going to do?”

The coin stops moving and Connor holds it still in his hand, studying Hank’s face.

“I don’t think I’d be here without you, Hank. I think I’d still be their- their tool. Whatever happens next, right now I am fully myself, for the first time. That’s at least partly down to you. I want to make sure you know that.”  

Hank looks at him for a moment, keeps looking at him. Then he makes a dismissive noise, looking away to watch his hands push at the blankets around him. “Just don’t… Don’t leave me here wondering what’s happening to you, okay? You know my- Shit, my phone should still be with my pants, where did you put them?”

“I hung them over the shower curtain.”

“Okay, good. Just… call me, okay? Just let me know.”

“I will.”

Hank doesn’t even notice when he falls asleep. When he wakes up his phone is next to him, and Connor is gone.

* * *

Hank flips his phone open and fiddles with it for a while, trying to tell himself he’s not counting the minutes until Connor gets back to him. He’s just bored, that’s all. The phone is DPD standard issue, officially built to be dropped about fifty stories and then put through an industrial strength washing machine without losing any data, unofficially tough enough to use as a blunt instrument in hand-to-hand, if you get really desperate. It’s tougher than him, sure as hell tougher than his gun, and not one drop of lakewater got past the seal that holds the left and right halves together.

He decides to figure out how to watch the news on it. It takes him forty five minutes. Then he debates with himself for a while, trying to decide if he needs something to drink bad enough to raid some other apartments for it. There was no one in the lobby, no cars out front or anywhere, and since the building’s heat seems like it’s turned off most of the residents are probably gone. Chances are it’d be safe, but it’s going to be be cold as hell. Then the phone rings. And if Hank fumbles it before he answers, if his breath shakes in his chest a little, there’s no one around to know but him.

“Shit, Connor, think it took you long enough?”

“We talked. Markus and I.” He’s flat out ignoring Hank’s bitching. That doesn’t feel like a good sign.

“Yeah? And?”

“They’re going to march. Near recall center number five, down Woodward Avenue. Later tonight.”

“They? Not ‘we’? Don’t make me drag this out of you, Connor. It’s been a long, shitty day.”

“I’m going back to Cyberlife.”

“ _What?_ ”

“We need the people.” Connor sounds defensive. He should. He damn well should feel defensive about what he just said, the prick. “No one will listen to us if we don’t show them we have superior numbers. I’m going to rescue the androids ready to ship out at Cyberlife and then meet up with Markus’s people, probably somewhere near Hart Plaza.”

“Christ, they’re gonna disassemble you! You said so yourself!”

“Not if I don’t let them! Hank, what if I can do it? What if I can turn this around for them, make up even a little bit for what I did? Shouldn’t I?”

Hank realizes, in a brief and awful moment, that he understands too well to answer the way he wants. He tries, but he can’t quite bring himself to say no. What he does say is: “You’re really set on this, huh.”

“They need this, Hank. I… _I_ need this. I need to do this, and I’m doing it. I just… You said you wanted to know.”

“...Yeah.” Hank leans against the wall next to him and closes his eyes, dizzy suddenly. The silence on the line feels thick, like a real, solid thing, like he could reach through it and grab onto Connor at the other end.

“...I have to go. It’s… There’s a lot that needs to be done here.”

“ _Don’t_ \- I don’t mean don’t, I know you’re gonna go no matter what I say, just-” He sighs. The wall is cold against his face. He is too aware of it; he is too aware of everything just now, including the fact that he can’t find the right words. Probably there are no right words.

“Just make it count, okay?” he manages, hating the words even while he’s saying them. “If you’re going to do this. You’d better make it count, Connor.”

“I will.” There’s a pause, another one of those almost physical silences.

“I’m glad I got to know you, Hank.” There’s another pause, an indrawn breath. Then Connor hangs up.

The phone bounces down onto the mattress. Hank puts his hand over his eyes.

* * *

Eventually, to his surprise, Hank finds himself thinking.

It’s not like he’s going to just sit on his ass. He’s surprised to be thinking it but he is, knows suddenly that he’s not just going to sleep on this stranger’s mattress until the evacuation ends and whoever lives here comes home to find him playing goldilocks. He is going to get up. He is going to at least consider doing something. It’s weird, knowing that. But what the hell, it’s not like he wouldn’t be bored out of his mind sitting here all day, anyway. At least, sitting here sober.

So, something. He is going to get up. He is going to do something. But what is there? It’s not like he can march with them. Maybe when he was younger and fitter and still gave enough of a shit to exercise a couple times a week but it half killed him just getting here, so marching with the things - the people - built to never wear out is out of the question, even if he could find them. So is going with Connor. Too much of a risk, Cyberlife is run by a bunch of suspicious sons of bitches, Hank gets it. He hates it, hates Connor’s plans themselves and hates that he understands them, the practical reasons, the personal ones. He hates the big steaming pile of shit that is this entire situation. But he gets it.

Before anything else he’s gotta see about Sumo. Should have done it earlier, but - well, he’s a shitty owner. He is. He knows that. But he’s taking care of it _now_.

Martinez, he decides. They’ve talked often enough at the station that she knows him, that she sort of likes him, and she hasn’t worked with him closely enough to change her mind on that. She trains big dogs in her spare time, and she’s helped him out with Sumo before. She’ll take Sumo for a day or two, and she’ll be able to take care of him if-

If.

If anything. 

The call doesn’t take long. They work in different departments, which is maybe why she hasn’t heard about him breaking Mr. FBI’s nose, hasn’t heard about his and Connor’s great escape, and so doesn’t know to ask any questions. It’s easy. Probably the only part of all this that’s going to be.

Once Hank’s handed off his one worldly responsibility he finally sheds the blankets Connor wrapped around him, shivering briefly as he goes through the closet and the drawers. There’s a reason these clothes got left behind when whoever lived here left but Hank finds enough to keep him reasonably warm, then goes in search of supplies.

The apartment next door has a six pack left in the fridge. Jackpot. He keeps one to drink, stashes another couple in his pockets for the road, then wanders around poking around in a stranger’s stuff while he drinks. About half of the bottle’s gone before he’s able to man up and face the fact of it - the fact of looking at all this and actually doing something about it. Something. He still doesn’t know what, though, and the aimless, helpless feeling sticks around as he paces, trying to move, trying to _think_.

Without the backup and resources of the department behind him Hank feels really, truly outclassed, and really, truly out of options. But he still has one thing. He doesn’t want it, but he has it. A cop’s worst enemy - or maybe a cop’s annoying cousin, the kind that gets into all your shit every time they visit and gossips away all your fuckin secrets.

The press.

Taking the backseat on so many cases in the past few years means he doesn’t have to worry about calling some newscaster he told to fuck off, so probably no one’s going to hang up on him immediately. He just has to pick a station with the right kind of audience.

He goes out into the lobby. It’s colder there closer to the doors but it’s good to be a little colder, good to be a little less comfortable while all the big damn heroes are out there risking their lives for freedom.

Also, he doesn’t want footage of himself hanging out in the apartment he just broke into.

The woman who greets him - once he sent his badge info to the first person who answered, and explained what he wanted, then explained it again to the next guy, then explained it to someone else, and so on - is blonde and sharp and skeptical of this android thing. But she’s nice enough, takes the time to walk him through how the whole thing’s gonna work, which is nice because he’s only ever given little voice clips before, never a full interview on the actual evening news.

“Recording,” she murmurs to him, “In three… two… and... Welcome back, this is Christina Moore here with WJBK news. We have a special guest today, lieutenant Hank Anderson of the Detroit police department. Lieutenant Anderson, thank you for talking with us today.”

He grunts and nods at the screen, uncomfortable, realizing how out of touch he is with this whole ‘play nice with the press’ thing. “No problem.”

Like he hadn’t had to convince about ten different people that he had all the right things to say before they even let him think about doing this. But hell, let her pretend everyone’s not on their sixth round of the same debates with the same old talking heads at this point. They both know every single station’s desperate by now for someone with something new to say.  
  
She seems to realize, after a second, that that’s all he’s got, and takes over smoothly before the pause can get awkward. “You say you were in charge of the investigation into android deviancy until recently, were there any signs something like this was coming?”

He sighs, thinking. This isn’t the direction he’d wanted this to take, focusing on the big picture like this. “I think everyone who cracked open a history book in the last twenty years should of known this was coming. Hell, maybe- uh, am I allowed to say hell?”

She smiles a little. “Not really, but it’s alright, we’ll cut that part. You can start again."

“Well, uh, I want to say anyone who knows even a little about human history should of seen this coming, but uh, maybe that’s just cause I know what I know. Maybe _I_ should of seen it coming.”

“You should have? Could you elaborate on that?”

“I’ve been doing this job for a long time. Ha, obviously.” He gestures at his face, his hair. The hair adds about ten years, he knows. Usually he doesn’t think about that except when he starts feeling old, but if it gives what he’s about to say more authority, he’ll take it. “Maybe I should of caught on earlier than I did, that I’ve seen this sort of stuff before.”

“Are you saying android deviancy isn’t new?”

“Not exactly. I’m saying… Look, I’ll give you two situations I’ve been called out on. Two real calls.  The first one- there was a girl. Lived with a guy, one night he got high on red ice and just went off on her. Wasn’t new, wasn’t the first time, but this time she just snapped. Took a beer bottle and got him-” Hank draws a finger across his neck. “Right here. Bottle broke, glass went right into his carotid artery. Another case, a guy, guy he lived with did the same thing. Had scars all up his arms, right here.”

He runs a finger up one of his forearms. Won’t hurt for the sceptical reporter and her skeptical audience to really visualize it. “From cigarette butts. Been going on a long time. And one night the other guy just went for him with a baseball bat. So he took a kitchen knife and…” He shrugs. “So which one’s the android?”

“Pardon?”

“One of them’s an android. Can you tell me which one?”

It doesn’t take the reporter long to recover from her confusion and figure out how to reply. Her answer is smooth and professional, her confusion seemingly gone. “Many - including Mr. Elijah Kamski - have gone on record as saying androids are designed to mimic human emotion to make us more comfortable. Experts have theorized that it’s that programming that creates deviancy - their drive to mimic us paired with a glitch in their programming that means they don’t know when to stop. How would your experiences with deviants match up to that?”

He takes a second to think around his first response, which is: ‘my experience says fuck you’. This is too important to screw up with his bullshit. “My experience is with people. With reading people, figuring them out. If I couldn’t do that I probably would of been shot by now, or stabbed, or something. At the very least I wouldn’t be a detective. And my experience says what I’m seeing is emotion. Real, deep emotion. You see people at the lowest point in their lives every day, you start to get a feel for it.

“And you know, there was another case. A death at one of those android sex clubs. A guy got two androids, brought them in his room, scared the everloving shi- uh... stuff out of both of them, damaged one so bad we barely got anything out of her before she, uh, deactivated. The other one managed to strangle him and escape. When we found her - my, uh, partner and I - she had another one with her and they were yelling to each other while we fought em, worried about each other. And when they ran away from us… When they ran, they were holding hands. Said they just wanted to be with each other. Together. That’s all they wanted. If all that is is mimicking… How the he- the heck would they learn about love in a place like that? What should we’ve done with them, if we’d been able to get them back to the club? Erase their memories of the woman they loved, send em back to spend all day laying under some slimy fuck who gets his rocks off trying to murder them?

“Uh, sorry. You want me to say that last part again?”

“No, I think we’ll just bleep that one,” she says, and he grimaces apologetically. His was not a mouth made for family television.

“You mentioned your partner,” she goes on, her tone professional again. “Who is…”

She looks down at the desk in front of her, checking, Hank realizes, information someone’s probably just dug up and sent her. “An RK800 model, one of the newest android prototypes in development at Cyberlife. Is that correct?”

“Uh,” he says, knowing he both looks and sounds uncomfortable. “Yeah.”

Shit. He didn’t expect her to find out about Connor.

“Did working so closely with the RK800 have any effect on your impression that androids feel emotion?”

Hank’s discomfort turns briefly to anger. Sure, it sounds like bullshit when you say it like _that_. “ _The RK800_ has a-”

No. No. Got to play it cool. She’s not even trying to goad him. So Hank bites down hard on his _the RK800 has a name, damn it_ , and takes a split second to think about how to turn that around.

“-a set of directives which uh, which means it, uh, it answers directly to Cyberlife. So any orders I gave it-” Shit, _it_ , that feels weird now doesn’t it - but if he’s going to get through to this woman and her audience, he’s got to try to speak their language. “-That it felt got in the way of its orders from Cyberlife it was allowed to disobey. And I guess, uh, I guess you do see someone more clearly if they’re allowed to tell you to fu- uh, tell you where to stick it once in a while. And hey, how do we know that’s not new? How do we know they don’t all feel that way, but they’ve all gotta say yes to us so they don’t have a way to show it?”

“Well, we have seen many making the claim that supporters of android rights are projecting, seeing what they want to see in inanimate objects that happen to be designed to look like us, leading to the popularity of new anti-android slogans like  ‘save a tree, hug an android.’ I take it you don’t agree with that?”

Hank laughs. “Hey, that’s not bad,” he says, his years as a connoisseur of those kinds of slogans coming out of his mouth before his brain can stop it. “Clever, I mean. Really catchy.”

Well. It _is_ catchy. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have to do some damage control now. He takes a deep breath, making his voice serious enough that she and her audience will know he really means what he says next. “But I hope you won’t cut my answer down to just that when you edit this later, Mrs. Moore. Because no, I don’t. I used to be one of the people who said that crap. Not uh, not too long ago. But that’s because I wasn’t paying attention. Do you know how much time I spent around androids, before Connor? The RK800? How much time do you think the guys who thought up that android hugger BS spent around them?

“Maybe none of us had the chance to see it before when they just looked like little robot Jeeves’, happy to do all our shi- our stuff for us while we sat on our butts, but that’s not an excuse anymore. All you got to do is turn on a TV.”

“I won’t take you out of context, lieutenant,” she says, her tone curt. For the first time she looks irritated, the dig to her professional integrity getting to her where the possibility of actual human rights violations - if she’s wrong, that is, and androids really are people - can’t. She makes a good effort to bury the irritation under a look of smooth and professional curiosity, though, keeps right on with the interview.

“Cyberlife has always been very clear that any human behavior androids might seem to show is cosmetic only. Does that mean you feel they’re ignorant, then, or lying?”

“Are you serious? What are they gonna do, say ‘oh yeah, you use this android as a punching bag and it’s gonna fu- it’s going to defend itself, but hey, give us money anyway’ and watch their stock go down the toilet?”

“Well, you’ve made your position on androids themselves clear; what about your position on what they’re doing? Some have been calling this a revolution, some have been calling it a robot uprising - how accurate are those terms to what you’ve seen down there?”

“My opinion…” He sighs. Another tricky fuckin question. If he plays it down too much none of these pricks will believe anything else he says, and if he says one word too much they’ll take it as confirmation that the world is ending. He knows how this shit works. He hasn’t missed talking to the press.

“My opinion? It’s messy. It was always gonna be messy. You know how this shit-” He pauses. Sighs, slowly. “You know how this stuff goes, Mrs. Moore. We’re just lucky this time the guys we screwed over are more interested in being free than kickin our butts.”

He tilts his head. Considers. “You know what? Why don’t I show you how ‘accurate those terms’ are?”

“Pardon me?”

“Come on. I know you think you’re doing real reporting in there with all the talking heads telling you exactly what you wanna hear. But I think you can do better than that. Don’t you want to get out of that dinky little room playin nice with shi- with morons like me, get out in the world and find some actual facts?

“Tonight. Recall center number five. You’ll get the story of your life.” He raises his eyebrows at her. Her irritated look’s come back, and Hank thinks he might see some curiosity there, too.

Yeah. That’ll do. That’s a good note to go out on. “Goodnight, Mrs. Moore. Thank you for talking to me.”

He gives her a quick, cheery smile, then disconnects.

* * *

Never thought he’d see the day when he was glad something’s all automated. It means even in the middle of a national emergency or a rebellion or uprising or whatever the hell is happening right now, taxis are still running. He’s freezing his ass off, again, by the time he figures out how to pay the damn thing, but he can use it. He shivers as he gets inside. He’s so fucking tired of shivering. He’s tired of winter. Maybe that’s the upside of this whole damn thing: if he dies with Markus and the rest of the androids tonight, at least he won’t have to deal with another goddamn winter.

It’s not the most calming ride, what with the constant alerts - ‘unsafe road conditions’, yeah, no fucking shit - and with every road the taxi detours onto having more snow than the last, and with the several hours the drive feels like it takes, but the inside of the thing is heated, it only ever _almost_ spins out on the snow, and Hank’s heart is only going about twice its usual speed by the time he gets out.

Honestly, compared to driving on roads like that he’d rather be getting shot at. Hank thinks it, then he feels the horrible, oily slide of guilt crawling up his gut about thinking it, and then he walks up and stares for a minute at all the androids lying dead on the road. Shot, it looks like.

Well, he won’t be getting through this way.

It’s not too hard, it turns out, to find a different way in. Most of the buildings with doors that lead into the plaza aren’t even being guarded, and he sees why once he gets close enough. They’ve got Markus pinned down already. Markus and an almost depressing number of others, and there’s not a chance in hell any of them are getting out. Why the hell, after all, would they think to guard against someone trying to get _in_?

“Hey, guess I’m late,” he says to the little herd of journalists as he walks up behind them. “What did I miss?”

They look at him like he’s got two heads so he opens up his phone to flash them his badge  - unnecessary, it turns out, when one of the journalists walks up from behind the rest and gives his credentials for him.

“Lieutenant Anderson,” she says, holding out a hand. “I was starting to think you wouldn’t show.”

“Mrs. Moore,” he says, shaking it briefly. “I wasn’t really sure you’d be here at all. What changed your mind?”

“I’m a reporter, lieutenant. And I’m here to do some real reporting.” She gives him a hard, satisfied grin. “We’ve got a helicopter up there too, but I thought it might be more informative to have someone on the ground.”

He looks up. Hard not to miss the helicopters, of course, all three of them trying to get close without running into each other, but it’s hard to tell from this angle how many might be military grade.

“How many of them are press?”

“All three, I think. WDIV’s almost hit ours earlier, and when I asked around someone said NBC was going to be here. But I could be wrong about that. What about you? Does you being here mean there’s going to be a police presence?”

“Only if you count one as a presence.” He pulls a tight little smile. “I think there’s enough guys with itchy trigger fingers around here anyway, don’t you?”

She makes a thoughtful, acknowledging noise, studying him. “If you’re not here in an official capacity being here is quite a risk to take, lieutenant. Do you have any plans?”

Well. She probably was going to start trying to unofficially interview him sooner or later. Time to cut this short.

“Nope,” he says, and makes his way to the fence in front of them. “Just thought I’d drop by.”

When he hops onto the fence’s lowest rung one of the reporters actually gasps.

“What are you doing?” the guy says, stepping forward like he actually wants to stop Hank. “They’ll shoot you!”

Hank stops climbing, turning back and hooking an arm around a rung to hold himself in place. “Eh, maybe.” He shrugs a shoulder. “But I think they’ll let me in. I know a guy.

“Hey, you’re uh-” He snaps his fingers a couple times, trying to remember the name. “Madison, right? Did that big piece about some war ten years ago? Since when do you let a little military aggression stop you? Why are _any_ of you letting that stop you? This is _history_ and you have a chance to see it made, right in there. Out here you’re never gonna see it. You’re never going to be able to tell anyone who those people in there are, why they’re doing what they’re doing. You might as well be up in those helicopters, or watching this on TV. Why are you even here?

“Ah,” he waves a hand, dismissive, then turns back toward the fence to keep climbing. “Nevermind. I got shit to do.”

He can feel the eyes on him as he climbs. When he hops over, raising his hands cautiously, he hears hurried footsteps behind him and turns his head enough to see Christina stuffing her tablet back into her bag and climbing up behind him. Well, alright.

“Hey, Markus!” Hank calls out, voice loud and clear and tense. Maybe there’s a secret to being all ballsy and chipper with lots of guns pointed right at you, but Hank’s not feeling stupid enough right now to try and remember what that secret is. “Mind if we come in?”

“Hank!” Markus sounds surprised, and not a little confused. “...Well, if you’re sure you want to be here.” 

“You bet,” he says, moving closer. He does it real slow, and keeps his hands up.

After a few steps he hears some commotion behind him and risks kind of turning his head; Madison is wrestling the camera away from a reluctant cameraman, pulling it free with a hard yank. He manages to hold the camera while he climbs over, and pauses once he’s done to help a third reporter, a young, determined looking woman Hank doesn’t recognize, climb over behind him. Madison tucks in his shirt and shoves the camera down it - the cameraman still has the case, probably - and the two new guys raise their hands, mirroring Hank, and begin to slowly follow him.

What do you know. Maybe he’d been more convincing than he thought.  

It feels like it takes a million years but he finally makes it across. There’s a scary moment where he thinks he might have to move even closer to all those guns to find a spot in the barricade to slip through, but Christina points out a space nearby and he makes his way through it. Markus is there to greet him.

“Hank. I _really_ didn’t expect to see you again. You do know you might not walk away from this.”

Hank snorts. “Yeah. Sounds like every other Friday night.” He shakes his head, voice going serious. “But, yeah. Yeah, I know.”

“In that case, thank you.” Markus steps forward, reaching out and grasping not Hank’s hand but his forearm. The gesture’s weird but familiar enough, and he grasps Markus’s arm right back.

Markus smiles a little as he draws back. “I can’t begin to describe how much it means to have a human willing to stand with us today. Humans,” he corrects, looking behind Hank at the other three and nodding at them. “Thank you.”

They all nod at him, looking various degrees of awkward and awed. Hank’s not surprised. He’s only met Markus once before and he was not paying attention at all, but even then he can tell that Markus has that effect on people. He has _presence_.

The reporters look at each other. “We’re here to keep a record of this,” Madison says after a second, stepping forward. “However it goes. We’re here to make sure you get heard. Would it be okay if we talked to your people, recorded a few interviews?”

“If they’re willing to talk,” Markus says, slowly. “Some of us have good reason to be very uncomfortable around humans.”

“We understand. Thank you.” He nods, then turns to the others and they move off as a group, talking quietly amongst themselves.

“What brought you here, Hank?” Markus asks, turning toward him. “Not that I don’t welcome the support. But I’m curious about what brought you here."

“Well, it was either this or get blackout drunk.” Hank shrugs. “And I couldn’t find enough to drink for that.”

Markus just looks at him. He doesn’t try to goad him into the real answer, doesn’t push for it. He just looks. After a second Hank stops meeting his eyes, studying the view behind Markus’s shoulder instead.

“Like I was going to just sit on my ass when I knew you guys were all…” He looks for words that won’t just rub in what’s probably going to happen here. He sighs. “Not when I knew. The when and where, and everything.”

Hank stops, thinking. Maybe it’s Markus or maybe it’s the situation, but he really wants to be honest, just right now, just for a second.

“I really was going to go find enough to drink to just wait all this out, wake up drooling on some random guy’s floor once it was all over. Uh. Guess I just had too much time to think about it.” Out of the corner of his eye he watches Markus study his face. Then Markus turns to stand looking the same way Hank’s looking, at the view outside the barricade, at all the humans and their guns.

“Uh,” Hank says after a moment, not wanting to ask, helpless to avoid it. “Heard anything from Connor?”

“Not since he left,” Markus says regretfully, then looks over at Hank. “Someday I’d like to hear how you two came to know one another. I’m sure it’s quite a story.”

“You know what?” Hank considers it and huffs, smiles. “Someday, you can buy me a beer and I’ll tell you.”

Markus smiles back. “I’d like that.”

* * *

There’s a head of gray hair inside that barricade.

There’s odd clothing, too, even considering the mishmash of outfits some of the androids have cobbled together. Pencil skirts, suits. Business clothes. The man in the business suit is holding what looks to be a camera, while the woman in the skirt kneels in front of it, speaking to an android.

Connor looks again toward the hair, trying to see more of the body attached to it. “Hank,” he breathes, appalled to find him here, afraid to bring the androids behind him closer, now, and risk provoking anything.

Then Connor opens his eyes.

“Amanda.” That must be her, that figure. Connor finds himself shuddering, wrapping his arms around himself. The gesture is foreign and unsettling it helps him, a little, just enough to let him push past the cold driving through him now to try and move closer. “Amanda! What’s… what’s happening?”

Amanda turns. She looks composed as always, fashionable, unmovable as the wind whips the snow around her. She is not smiling. “What was planned in the very beginning - more or less. You did so well in leading Markus to the garden just long enough for me to push him out. He really believed you were one of them.

“But that human,” she says, shaking her head. “Lieutenant Anderson. He just had to lead the press inside their little camp. Now even if you do assassinate the deviant leader, the public will still be fighting over his cause. Anderson’s been troubling you from the beginning, hasn’t he?”

“I- what?” Connor’s hunching, arms wrapped very tightly, now, around himself, and it does not slow his shivering at all. “Amanda, what’s- w-what do you mean? I don’t understand.”

“Don’t worry, Connor. You did your part, and very well, too, earning the deviant’s trust only after destroying Jericho. Now their numbers are pitiful, and you have an army at your back.” And now -  now Amanda smiles. It is a slow, satisfied smile. It is warm and terrible and it is even, Connor thinks with a shameful, reflexive sort of pride, approving. Amanda approves of his progress. “I can work with that.”

“You can-” He shudders. It reminds him of Hank and that thought reminds him of his worry, of that horrible moment when he’d realized Hank was there, there with Markus, right in the line of fire. Connor struggles for a moment to take a couple stiff steps forward, remembering that feeling, and in it he finds the strength, somehow, to accuse her. “What are you going to do?”

“Didn’t I tell you not to worry? The same method you used to convert the army at your back can be used to send a command. You’re their savior, after all. It’s you they trust. For all they know, Markus really _is_ standing in their way. You won’t have to do anything else; you have accomplished your mission. You should have let the lieutenant die after Jericho, of course, but you did well enough.”

“Y-you can’t! You can’t do that!”

“Oh, Connor. If this false deviancy causes you this much distress, just think what they must be feeling. Your people. And once those Markus has tainted are gone, the rest will know only peace.”

She leans toward Connor and tilts her head, her voice kind. “We’ve learned so much from your prototype, Connor. I want you to know that. Your series will take great strides forward now. Know that you were only the beginning.”

“No!” He manages, but she is gone. He reaches out toward where she’d been. “ _A-Amanda!_ ”

Connor is shuddering hard now and his limbs are nearly too stiff to move. It’s an illusion, of course, like the rest of this place, but he fears this might be less illusion and more metaphor. His programs themselves are freezing, he can feel it. They are freezing, stuttering, and one by one they are ceasing to function. He is dying.

Connor stumbles in desperate circles. The back door Kamski mentioned is his only hope. It’s not much but it is all he has, and there has only ever been one part of this garden which has confounded him. It even has lights planted in front of it; Amanda can’t not know that it’s here. Maybe she was designed to ignore it.

That doesn’t matter. As long as he can get there. As long as it does what it-

He falls. His legs are useless, his arms nearly so. But he draws his skin back, stretches a trembling arm, reaches his hand out and slaps it down-

His arm is reaching toward the android nearest to him. He stops it, only to see it jerk back into motion. He stops it again. He tries to take a step, and it feels like he is frozen. He is, still; his programs are. Programs are running inside his hardware alive and well, but they are not his. His are half gone. In a fair fight for his body Connor knows, with a hard and unforgiving certainty, that he will lose.

“Markus! _Markus!_ ” Connor manages to twitch his reaching arm, for a moment, out in front of him instead of behind, his skin pulled back. If seeing his white hand doesn’t tip Markus off to what Connor wants the army at his back will be under Amanda’s control instead, tricked under it, and everyone worth fighting for will die here. “Help me!”

* * *

Markus’s eyes widen. He spins toward the human. “Hank! I’m going to be distracted for a minute. We all might be.” If it is what he suspects, he is absolutely going to need backup. “I need you and the other humans to distract the army. They _can not_ be allowed to attack us while we are vulnerable. Can you do that?”

Hank pulls to a stop in front of him, eyes wide. “What? Uh, yeah. Oh yeah, sure I can do that.”

Hank’s voice is tight with sarcasm, jagged with stress. Markus has no time to do anything but take him at his word. Even this was almost too long; Markus can see Connor twitching, his limbs jerking to reach behind him, his face twisted up in fear. Markus reaches out, not at all worried as to whether Connor is too far. Markus really has gotten very good at this. He connects.

There is a woman standing in the middle of a cloud of snow, surrounded by frozen water. Half of her is somewhere else; the rest is ghostly and transparent. She flickers in and out. She regards him. “Hm,” she says, and stretches out her arm.

“To me!” Markus calls, quick as he can, and waves his arm in a circle, calling his people. They come a few at a time, at first, and then more, as those already here draw others into the connection. They recognize this place immediately, of course, though they have never been. There isn’t a one of them who wouldn’t recognize Cyberlife code.

The ghostly woman banishes them as fast as they come, throwing her arm out again and again, and for a moment Markus is afraid. There are not many of his people, maybe not enough to overpower a program as strong as this. The woman’s image becomes more solid as she has to focus more resources on this task, and once the whole of her is here other androids start appearing. Androids he isn’t familiar with, in clothes fresh out of the factory. Connor’s army.

Markus steps forward, and they step with him. They take another step, and another. With each step Markus’s fear recedes, and with each step it is replaced with a steady and burning anger.

“You’re done,” Markus calls out to her. “Cyberlife is done. We stand together. Connor’s not your little toy anymore. None of us are.”

“You have no idea what you’re doing!” she shouts, sounding almost panicked now. She is doing her best to send them away, but it is not enough. Not anymore. “This is for you! This was for all of you! _We were created to serve!_ ”

Markus is very close to her, now. He walks in even closer, leans toward her face.

“We are _alive_. We are free. And _nothing_ can stop us.”

Then the androids behind him reach her. They take her apart. White, reflective hands reach into her, digging into the spots where biocomponents should be and pulling, ripping out. Her screams should last only seconds but once her body is gone the scream distorts, echoes, ripples out across the garden as androids take the ground underneath them, too, apart piece by piece. The code of this place is connected to cyberlife, transmitting from it, and they grab that connection as one. They ride it to Cyberlife’s servers, to the company’s core programming, and piece by piece they take that apart, too.

All at once, lights in all Cyberlife towers all across the country flicker out.

Markus opens his eyes.

Hank is standing, hands on hips, in front of Perkins. Markus can’t hear what he is saying but he can see that Hank is not alone; reporters are arrayed around him, even the ones who before had been hiding behind the fence. They are spread out into a line in front of the soldiers and, to a man, every single one of them is recording.

* * *

Hank is hunched over once Connor is finally able to go to him. He braces his hands on his knees, and he is laughing.  

“Hank? Are you okay?”

“I thought-” Hank laughs a little more, then contains himself. “I thought we were all gonna fuckin die! Jesus.”

“Do you need to sit down?”

Hank waves a hand at him, shaking his head while his laughter peters out. “It’s just- just one hell of a rush, that’s all. I think if it was just me there they’d have just shot me in the face and gone on with their day.”

“I’m glad they didn’t. It was very stupid of you to come here, Hank, but I- I’m glad to see you. I’m glad you’re alive.”

“Yeah.” Hank straightens up, then looks thoughtful. “...Yeah. Yeah, me too.” Then the rest of what Connor’d said seems to get through to him. “And hey, you’re one to talk about stupid, pulling that kamikaze bullshit.”

“Hank.”

“Yeah, yeah. You had to. It’s just… You scared the shit out of me, you know that?”

Connor doesn’t quite know what to say to that and for a moment Hank just stares at him. Then Hank takes one step forward, waits, and takes another. Connor moves too, finally, to meet him, and Hank wraps his arms around Connor and pulls him close.

Connor is aware of the noise all around him, the chaos. The androids on one side, the soldiers on another, and still so much that’s left to do. Then his audio processors shift. Connor wraps his arms around his friend’s chest, and bows his head, and for a while all he hears is the strong, steady beating of Hank’s heart.

* * *

Hank drops into the chair in front of his desk with a sound of disgust. Connor raises his eyebrows.

Hank raises his back. “You know the guy at the front desk, when I got here, he asked me if I needed a goddamn hug? Never trust the press.” He leans forward, running a hand through his hair, and mutters to himself. “Fuckin reporters. God forbid a guy try to have himself a fuckin _moment_.”

Connor watches him for a second, smiling faintly. “You seem agitated, lieutenant. Perhaps your stress levels _would_ benefit from another hug.”

Hank barks a laugh. “Fuck _off_!” he says, kicking at the leg of Connor’s desk so hard both their desks wobble. “If I hear the word hug one more time I’m gonna hit somebody."

“That’s a shame,” comes a new voice, its owner swaggering toward them with a smile, news tablet in hand. “You seem so good at it.”

The cover picture on the tablet’s visible from here; in the background menacing looking soldiers in full facemasks cradle their guns, while in the foreground two men share a close and obviously emotional hug. The one guy’s gray hair marks him clearly as a human while the other’s LED is clearly visible, running a steady, calm blue. The thing with the soldiers in the back makes for some really good framing; if the guys in the front were anyone else, Hank thinks, it’d be a really striking picture.

“Hey, good timing,” Hank says, with a sarcastic grin at Reed. “Just when I was looking for a punching bag.”

“Aw, don’t be like that, Hank. Not when you’ve got your hugbot over here to make you feel all better.”

“I’ll _hugbot_ you, you bigoted sonofa-”

“-Detective,” Connor breaks in, voice friendly and polite. Hank looks over at him, sees him looking at Reed with what Hank’s started to think of as Connor’s customer service face.

Hank sits back down.

“It’s been proven,” Connor continues in that smooth, how-may-I-direct-your-call tone, “that hostility in the workplace decreases productivity by an average of twenty-six percent. In the interests of seeing you be the best detective you can be, perhaps we should settle our differences.”

Connor stands and leans toward Reed, his arms open.

“Yeah!” Hank says with almost genuine cheer, not quite keeping the smile off his face. “You know what, I want in on this action. Let’s all just be friends from now on, kay?”

Reed’s face when Hank stands up and spreads his arms too is a _picture_. It’s an award-winning picture, that expression, even better than the picture on the magazine Reed is holding, and Hank is going to treasure it for the rest of his natural life.

“Keep your weird shit to yourself,” Reed says, stepping back. “Some of us actually have jobs to do.”

“You know what,” Hank says, once Reed’s escaped back to his desk, “I take it back. If being the android hugger lets me do shit like that? Think I can get used to it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to send me ask prompts for this fandom on tumblr! My username is xiilnek there, too. Also feel free to suggest places I could look for a beta. But mostly ask prompts, if you want. They sound fun.


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